Evangelical-Bashers in an Age of “Tolerance”

The Bible warns that who believe in Jesus and follow His teachings will be hated by the world:

·       Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. (2 Timothy 3:12-13)

However, it is even more difficult for us to bear what has become increasingly manifest - our own “brethren” hate us, as Jesus had warned:

·       “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.” (Matthew 24:9-10)

The evidence of those who profess Christ turning against their brethren is rampant. In a Sojourners magazine article (5/11/20), D.L. Mayfield has joined a multitude of other evangelical-bashers in “sighting” the worst expressions of evangelicalism concerning the coronavirus:

·       “It’s not that I don’t want people healthy, it’s that I don’t want my freedom taken from me,”

·       “Freedom is more important than your life. Or my life,”

·       “Freedom trumps safety,” https://sojo.net/articles/push-reopen-american-evangelicals-fall-prey-political-strategy?fbclid=IwAR3mYWJ3gI5-KmF29k-gD43eqSvv6RevRkBmR7Cy5UcjX_U4hH8cWsbuAV8

These saying make us seem to be uncaring of the welfare of our neighbors. However, evangelicals instead say something more nuanced, like:

·       Christian love has to take precedence over every other concern. However, to determine what love looks like in the face of covid-19, is difficult to do. There are many imponderables that we must take into account. We have to weigh the potential costs of the virus against the costs entailed by closing down the economy and the losses of freedom.

Of course, such calculations are highly difficult to make. However, Mayfield uses these sayings to accuse Christians of seeking “their own personal rights and liberties” instead of seeking solidarity with “the entire community”:

·       Had American Christians completely lost the ability to recognize the need for solidarity in the face of a global pandemic? Through decades of advocating for their own personal rights and liberties, had they become incapable of working toward the common good — prioritizing the well-being of the entire community instead of just themselves?

Solidarity is a good thing when the strategy is good and proven. (Why isn’t Mayfield concerned about her solidarity with other Christians?) However, this is a question where differences of opinion should be tolerated. I’m sure that there are “Christians” who are selfishly seeking their own welfare, but are we more guilty of this than are others? According to Mayfield, we are! How does she come to this calculation? Instead, of statistics, she heaps one charge on top of the next, claiming that we are illegitimately mistrustful of government and prone to conspiracy theories:

·       I was raised in an [evangelical] culture steeped in conspiracy theories and a distrust of the government, but even this went too far for me.

Perhaps there are sound reasons to distrust our government officials, the media, and the morality being purveyed by Hollywood. Nevertheless, Mayfield wildly charges us with the hypocrisy endemic to the Constitution:

·       The inherent contradictions of the evangelical political mind is baked into the U.S. Constitution itself: Americans are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so long as you are a white, land-owning male.

This is a wild racist charge. Such a damning charge would ordinarily require a lot of corroborating evidence. However, Mayfield offers nothing apart from her own observations. The fact that she would dare to make such a charge stems from the fact that the media routinely denigrates evangelicals. Hence, she is a single voice among a vast choir of compatriots, who evidently believe that there is safety in numbers rather than in the facts.

Meanwhile, amidst this torrent of bad press against evangelicals, Mayfield ironically charges that we blindly regard ourselves as a “persecuted minority.” Just try to think of a Hollywood film or series that paints evangelicals in a positive light! Nevertheless, she accuses us as having “a distrust of institutions and powers.” This would be like charging Jews for being distrustful of Nazis. She concludes:

·       This…community now regularly makes headlines for acting in ways that do not benefit the most vulnerable, or ways that call on us to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Smacked down with such unfair allegations, should Mayfield be surprised that we are distrustful? However, loving-evangelicals falls far outside of her professed concern “to love our neighbors.” Even in this age of “tolerance,” it has become entirely acceptable to trash one particular community, ironically, a community committed to love, as many studies have shown. Of course, we fall far short of the example of Jesus, but does this make us hypocrites? To add insult to injury, Mayfield also censures us for our “distrust” of commentators like her.

*****

A favorite ploy of the evangelical- bashers is to equate us with Pharisees, like those who opposed Jesus. In one instance, Jesus had healed a crippled woman,

·       And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” (Luke 13:13-14 ESV)

Heartless? Yes! It’s not every day that the sick can come and get healed. Besides, should the Sabbath day take precedence over the healing of a desperate woman, who had suffered for 18 years? No! But this is how the world chooses to portray the evangelical, as heartless, brainless hypocrites, who are more concerned about trivial rules than about loving others. In contrast, Jesus is regarded as a loving and tender-hearted shepherd, who is willing to break the rules.

However, these aren’t accurate characterizations. For one thing, Jesus was a stickler on the laws/teachings of the Bible, which He never violated. Instead, He taught that we must live according to every one of God’s Words:

·       “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4; 5:17-18)

Instead of denigrating the Law, Jesus always sought to interpret it according to its deeper sense:

·       “Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.” (Matthew 12:5-7)

Jesus correctly insisted that there are some considerations greater than Sabbath Day observances, namely mercy! Nevertheless, Jesus was a model of fidelity to the law, the Words of God. This is not pharisaic.

It is also wrongly assumed that the Pharisees had been faithful observers of the Law. While they made a splendid superficial show of living by the Law, according to Jesus, they were hypocrites:

·       “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:46-47)

Why then were they esteemed as faithful interpreters and keepers of the Law of Moses? According to Jesus, their observance was all just a hypocritical self-centered show:

·       “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.” (Matthew 23:5-7) 

Even in our previous context, the religious leadership demonstrated their hypocrisy, since they too worked on the Sabbath:

·       Then the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it?  And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 13:15-16)

In contrast to the Pharisees, evangelicals strive to put the Lord and His Word first in their lives (Matthew 6:33; John 14:21-24). In this we struggle to not succumb to the temptations to win the esteem of others. Instead, we struggle to put our Savior first in all things. Many of us do not look very impressive on the outside (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). We often come from broken backgrounds and lack education and the respect of the community, but why are we so widely hated, even by those who call themselves “Christian?”

Ed Stetzer serves as a dean at the formerly evangelical Wheaton College and is an evangelical basher. In Christianity Today, he has written:

·       Christians are disproportionately fooled by conspiracy theories. I’ve also said before that when Christians spread lies, they need to repent of those lies. Sharing fake news makes us look foolish and harms our witness. https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2020/april/christians-and-corona-conspiracies.html

Are we more fooled by fake news than others? Seeing how our society has largely been taken captive by the mainstream media, it would seem that Stetzer’s charge is unsustainable. Besides, “being fooled by conspiracy theories” is in opposition to Stetzer’s charge that we are lying.

What evangelicals are facing had often been highlighted by our Master:

·       “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.  Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.” (John 15:18-20)

Our persecutors will even be convinced of the righteousness of their cause:

·       “Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me.” (John 16:2-3)

In contrast, the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were held in the highest esteem. They occupied the best seats and were distinguished by the highest levels of education and eloquence. However, we are to rejoice in the midst of persecution, as Jesus had explained:

·       “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:10-12)

How should we understand the increase of Christian-bashing, especially in the West? Jesus had explained, “The world…hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil” (John 7:7). We have observed that the more the West departs from its Christian roots the more it will hate biblical morality and feel condemned by it.